Abstract
Coastal water quality decline has become a major governance issue for different sectors. Like other coastal problems, responding to declines in coastal water quality requires involvement of several sectors to navigate of arenas of collaboration that: 1) enables disparate coastal interests to make decisions within autonomous and interdependent management arrangements; 2) helps these interests to negotiate power, leadership and accountability within collaborative processes; and 3) enables disparate interests to negotiate trade-offs between resource uses. This research uses a case study approach to examine three collaborative coastal management projects. Each project was managed by a collaborative committee, involving state and non-state agents. Several key findings were identified. Primarily, the results show how existing managerial and research capacity in state and non-state agents enable collaborative committees, to mediate power and leadership across several sectors operating within autonomous and interdependent governance arrangements, in a dual-level coastal jurisdiction. For example, the results show how existing interdependent governance arrangements related to water quality management could enable transitions from sector-specific approaches to more collaborative responses to water quality management. Conversely, the results show how autonomous governance arrangements impede collaborative water quality management. Given that this case study included wide engagement of public and private and national and subnational coastal interests, the findings could have significance for shaping collaboration as a strategic approach for responding to coastal water quality decline in other jurisdictions.
Presenters
Alvin ThompsonPostdoctoral Fellow, School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture | UBC Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability , University of British Columbia, British Columbia, Canada
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Technical, Political, and Social Responses
KEYWORDS
Collaborative, Coastal, Management, Coastal, Water, Quality, Power, Leadership, Accountability
